democracy

Everybody without blinders on knows that Bernie Sanders’ campaign was cheated in the 2016 primaries. Thereby all Americans who don’t belong to the privileged class at the top of our dunghill society were also cheated; and – like millions of my fellow Americans – I have been outraged ever since.

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People who have been isolated from immigration issues tend to think everything is so simple. They never wonder: How real or artificial are our borders? What is our responsibility in what happens in places like Mexico, like when OUR politician’s NAFTA agreement and OUR agricultural subsidies to large farming corporations in combination with the eliminated import protections from NAFTA destroy the family farms of countless Mexicans, so they are forced to flee north across the border to pick our melons for starvation waves for sheer survival? Or: Can an 18-month-old baby really break the law?

Therefore I am sharing a video I shared before, over a year ago, as a reminder:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “American Sueño Part 1: Meet Marisol”)

That’s the problem with demagoguery. A lot of people in a country suffer and want change. Along comes a demagogue who hides the true causes and solutions for their problems behind scapegoating a group of even weaker people who cannot defend themselves against these false accusations because they are at the very bottom of the economic and political hierarchy or a too-small minority. Continue reading →

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Once again, a collection of fine videos to brighten your weekend with enlightenment and fuel for our political revolution:

I.Jimmy Dore and Lee Camp together. A fine duo. Unfortunately, I felt they had both made the same statements before, and better, when they did them alone and better prepared. Still, I like what comes up 14:20 minutes into this clip (asking why you would donate to the “Democratic Party” when its primaries are rigged by its own admission!). The talk then moves to the topic of our rigged debates keeping out third parties… handcuffing presidential candidates to keep them away from the rigged debates… and record climate events in the past two months. Later Lee Camp, talking about Bannon, reveals how our corporate media lift up right-wingers by allowing only THEM to criticize corruption even though they are part of it):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Jimmy Dore On The Corporate State And The Power Of The Petrodollar “)

II.
Political wrangling surrounding Bernie’s Medicare for All bill:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Some Democrats Are Pretending Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’ Bill Doesn’t Exist “)

III.
The usual lies about healthcare costs and single-payer:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Aetna CEO is Scared To Death of Single-Payer”)

Debunking one of the biggest lies: No, single-payer coverage such as Medicare for All is not single-provider healthcare, meaning a government-run healthcare, but merely a government-secured payment system. So, you can pick and choose your doctors as before, except this time their will be no question whether or not you can pay. It is simply our government doing its sworn duty to look out for its citizens.

IV.
Cha-Ching:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Obama Enriches Self With Back Room Oil Deal”)

V.
We have a responsibility not only for ourselves to fix our country:

Various revelations about our country’s dark history. Also: an interesting and creepy revelation from former war correspondent Chris Hedges. He explains how the despotic regime in a foreign country went through the same motions as our southern states with their glorification of the Confederation: basically, when people are getting desperate over their worsening lives, give them a myth to feel good about, the better to control them. In our case, that myth would be the ‘noble heroism’ of our civil war’s slavery defenders, building up a white-against-black and south-against-north mentality that keeps us from uniting against the blood-sucking establishment controlling and exploiting us from above. The more divided we are, the better controlled from the top we are.

VI.
An older but very nice conversation:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Cornel West and Richard Wolff talk about Capitalism and White Supremacy”)

How much better off are freed slaves when they become enslaved by a wage slavery system? When one king of a company can hire and fire you, abuse you, rip you off and make you lick his boots – and every alternative job is just as bad – it is anathema to democracy!

VII.
Nice historic review of the last century of our economy and politics – the New Deal and its repeal:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Full Show 11/11/15: How Reaganomics Killed America’s Middle Class”)

Conclusion: we can’t keep a golden age after getting it, if we don’t topple the plutocrats who will roll back everything to resume their godlike status among a sea of serfs. The pendulum will always swing back to the dark side if we do nothing to lock it in place.

VIII.
And not to forget: the environment we depend on. One thing apparently forgotten in this conversation was the great danger that lies in our getting the permafrost soil to melt, releasing huge amounts of methane, which is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Basically, we are terraforming ourselves off this planet:

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When I just revisited the Represent.Us Supreme Court petition against gerrymandering that I announced twice recently, I found a count of 24,312 supporters with 688 still needed to reach the goal of 25,000. So, perhaps the originally planned Tuesday delivery has been postponed, or Represent.Us keeps gathering our votes to make a greater impact again later. Either way, you can still join the supporters of the petition. You may also ask yourself how an end to gerrymandering can be factually achieved, beyond the first step of just outlawing it. In other words, is there an alternative way of drawing voting districts that is decisively better for voters and democracy? Continue reading →

And while I don’t watch John Oliver anymore since his 2016 election behavior (and you usually won’t find him here anymore), I came across this clip when searching for comprehensive, brief, explanatory videos about gerrymandering, and it is quite worth watching despite Sir John ofPrivilege not managing to desist a quick snide remark against Jill Stein or our much needed refusal to vote for the corrupt party duopoly:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Gerrymandering: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)“)

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Someone once mentioned that he or she found sheriffs much more trustworthy than police because sheriffs (at least officially) serve the populations who vote them into office. Police, on the other hand, is an enforcement tool of the state, and when the state is undemocratic and despotic by nature (not a democracy) or in bed with a corrupt private sector oligarchy, police becomes a terror upon the citizenry.

In the U.S., with all our internationally unequaled police killings,unlawful (or at least unconstitutional) arrests under bogus charges to criminalize peaceful protesters, with rampant police rackets, and rising overall hubris and brutality, we are alarmingly far along the way to out-and-out despotism. Watch the case of a dutiful, lawful nurse being brutally assaulted and arrested by a law-breaking cop, with commentary and numerous updates on the case (which many of you may already know about minus some of the updates):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Crazy Cop Brutalizes A Nurse Inside Hospital In Utah”)

Afterword: One of the dangers in all of this is the adaptability of human beings. Like frogs that never jump out of a slowly heating pot until it boils them to death, yesterday’s outrage becomes today’s new normal and the prelude of worse things to come. Hence we must fight the beginnings.

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No need, this weekend, to slump and sink into the corporate media’s dementing morass. Here are six enlightening videos about our man-made nightmare world and ways to fix it. And to finish on a high note, number seven is a recording of some simple, harmless fun for a change. I hope you won’t mind. It reminds me of younger, more innocent times in my life, or the kind of life we could live if we didn’t have to struggle for survival so much in a world where natural scarcity has been overcome and replaced with man-made poverty, exclusion, and despair.

I. A Living Minimum Wage

Quite possible. Simply a policy choice:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Australian McDonalds Workers Paid Like No Worker In America Ever Has”)

This video nicely echoes things I keep saying: Low economic stress drives a lot of negative behavior. There are a lot of selfish reasons to want your fellow Americans to do well. You can do things for other people out of self interest.

Quote: “So many Americans have been bamboozled by the billionaires.”

II. Patronage instead of Democracy

The big business of raking in and skimming off political donations:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “DNC Having Trouble Fundraising—Nomiki Explains”)

III. Kick the Liars

An Example of Not Letting Lying Excuses Pass:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Campaign to Recall Californian Democrat that Blocked Single-Payer Underway”)

Let’s hope the recall works, and every other recall and ousting we must relentlessly attempt until we whittle the corrupt political establishment down.

IV. The GOP’s Christian Right

Ever wondered about the Christian Right which played such a big role in the GOP even as the GOP was hurting American workers, steamrollering over our Constitution, spreading war in the Middle East, abducting and torturing people, trying to dismantle Social Security and so on? Certain money barons in the GOP certainly partnered up with “Christian” leaders and took advantage of a unifying force which would let them betray the people to the corporations and billionaire class with impunity while their party base and voters were distracted over ancient Biblical bullying mandates and their modern resurrection, just like neoliberals in the “Democratic” Party were distracting us with minority protection issues (which, while valid, still distract us from the higher priorities — and which were going hand-in-hand with the GOP’s Christian Right trickery, by the way, like both parties were harmoniously working together for our robber billionaires — gee, were they?)? Well here is an interesting video talk about the other end of the equation:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Ex-Producer Reveals the truth about Pat Robertson”)

V. Grass Roots VS King Money

Ways for regular folks to deflate the iron rule of Money:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “D@W-LA: Nancy Berlin of Arroyo S.E.C.O.”)

VI. Manufacturing Terrorism: The Taliban

People rarely turn to extremism without reason or a little help:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Fact: Taliban Has Surrendered Multiple Times – US Rebuffed Them”)

VII. Some Harmless Fun to Finish With

Since I serve up so much depressing or exhausting news, how about a little, harmless snippet of fun to finish with for a change (and show us what a happy future world could look like):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “The Funniest Table Tennis Match in HISTORY”)

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Did you know that, early next week, the Supreme Court is about to decide whether to end partisan gerrymandering? It’s almost certainly the biggest anti-corruption case of the year. We, the people, have a few days left to let the SCOTUS know what we want. Gerrymandering has dropped to a backseat when we are talking about rigged elections since, lately, voter suppression, ballot spoilage, and voting machine rigging have surged so much. But, gerrymandering has long been one of the 800-pound gorillas in the room of election integrity, one we definitely mustn’t ignore.

Here is the link to the page Represent.Us has thrown up to let us vote against partisan gerrymandering which is one of the surest ways to fix election outcomes and guarantee corrupt career politicians their eternal re-elections, especially when people mostly pick between only two parties and their voting behaviour is very predictable: Add your name to this petition before September 5th!

And here is a brief video on how gerrymandering, directed by each state’s dominating party, works:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Gerrymandering: How drawing jagged lines can impact an election – Christina Greer”)

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It is raining demands to donate to the “Democratic” Party and their allied organizations (like MoveOn.org), and I keep asking myself: why the hell would I give them money? To finance yet another grand show of fake primaries?

I gave to Bernie Sanders last year, but – quite frankly – I was still a little naive back then, and didn’t pay close attention to whether I was contributing to his campaign directly or via the cheating DNC which raked in millions of dollars in donations by dangling Bernie in front of our eyes while it secretly installed Shillary as their November candidate. Just think of the civil lawsuit brought against the DNC about this fraud… The DNC crooks sent their lawyers into the courtroom to declare that it’s perfectly legal for the DNC to sit in back rooms, smoking cigars and picking their candidates, no matter what the voters want who gave them donations not realizing they were financing a complete charade.

Well, in that case, why would I ever let a penny of mine get anywhere near the DNC in the future?

Listen to me, “Democratic” Party leadership: When you dismiss me, I dismiss you. Good-bye and good riddance!

A political party which can just do anything with the money we give it, regardless of what we give it for, is not worthy of my support.

The same goes for the Republican Party, of course. When have we last seen a real people’s representative on their ballots? Only independents and third-party candidates are worth our support nowadays. The two corrupt political gangs have sold us out and denied us our constitutional democracy long enough. Time we take our government back from them, and then our economy from the robber billionaires for whom both major parties work and who hold us in wage slavery and poverty, aiming to not only own title on most of everything, but the whole world and us who live in it.

Addendum: To avoid misunderstandings, when worthy candidates (against all odds!) appear on the ballot with a “D” by their names, I may still vote for them if no better independent or third party candidates did make it on the ballot. Just don’t expect me to throw away my hard-earned and insufficient-for-a-good-life money on faked primaries. Nobody should do that. And to reiterate the other issue: I want a true people’s party, whether it comes about via an internal revolution within the “Democratic” Party or via successful launch and growth of a new party with built-in bottom-up democracy as opposed to the party duopoly’s anti-democratic top-down mind manipulation and chain of command.